the deposition of Wenzel of Bohemia.  The councillors with whom he had acted since his resumption of authority saw themselves powerless.  John of Gaunt indeed still retained influence over the king.  It was the support of the Duke of Lancaster after his return from his Spanish campaign which had enabled Richard to hold in check the Duke of Gloucester and the party that he led; and the anxiety of the young king to retain this support was seen in his grant of Aquitaine to his uncle, and in the legitimation of the Beauforts, John’s children by a mistress, Catherine Swinford, whom he married after the death of his second wife.  The friendship of the Duke brought with it the adhesion of one even more important, his son Henry, the Earl of Derby.  As heir through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, to the estates and influence of the Lancastrian house, Henry was the natural head of a constitutional opposition, and his weight was increased by a marriage with the heiress of the house of Bohun.  He had taken a prominent part in the overthrow of Suffolk and De Vere, and on the king’s resumption of power he had prudently withdrawn from the realm on a vow of Crusade, had touched at Barbary, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1390 sailed for Dantzig and taken part in a campaign against the heathen Prussians with the Teutonic Knights.  Since his return he had silently followed in his father’s track.  But the counsels of John of Gaunt were hardly wiser than of old; Arundel had already denounced his influence as a hurtful one; and in the events which were now to hurry quickly on he seems to have gone hand in hand with the king.

[Sidenote:  Richard’s Tyranny]

A new uneasiness was seen in the Parliament of 1397, and the Commons prayed for a redress of the profusion of the Court.  Richard at once seized on the opportunity for a struggle.  He declared himself grieved that his subjects should “take on themselves any ordinance or governance of the person of the King or his hostel or of any persons of estate whom he might be pleased to have in his company.”  The Commons were at once overawed; they owned that the cognizance of such matters belonged wholly to the king, and gave up to the Duke of Lancaster the name of the member, Sir Thomas Haxey, who had brought forward this article of their prayer.  The lords pronounced him a traitor, and his life was only saved by the fact that he was a clergyman and by the interposition of Archbishop Arundel.  The Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester at once withdrew from Court.  They stood almost alone, for of the royal house the Dukes of Lancaster and York with their sons the Earls of Derby and Rutland were now with the king, and the old coadjutor of Gloucester, the Earl of Nottingham, was in high favour with him.  The Earl of Warwick alone joined them, and he was included in a charge of conspiracy which was followed by the arrest of the three.  A fresh Parliament in September was packed with royal partizans, and Richard moved boldly